The Match Girl and the Heiress

by Seth Koven

  109. Poverty on Marner Street, where the Dowell-Endersbee-Dellar clan lived for several decades, may have been endemic, but according to the investigator sent by the great social surveyor Charles Booth, it was neither “dangerous” nor “vicious” like that notorious hotbed of Irish unruliness, the “Fenian Barracks.” See “Walk with Mr Carter, District Inspector of Police, District 12 [Bow and Bromley],” May 31, 1897, B346, pp. 48–49, Charles Booth Papers, BLPES. The Fenian Barracks, only a short distance to the west of Nellie’s home across Devons Road, were widely reputed to be among “the worst streets in any district…. Men are not human they are wild beasts…. All are Irish Cockney. Not an Englishman or a Scotchman wd live among them.”

  110. On the Chinese in East London, see Ross Forman, “A Cockney Chinatown: the Literature of Limehouse, London,” in China and the Victorian Imagination: Empires Entwined (Cambridge, 2013).

  111. Opponents of Jewish immigration and white female emigration included the reactionary conservative Arnold White as well as some progressive socialists, such as Margaret Harkness, who had contributed money to support the Bryant and May girls. On White and Harkness, see Seth Koven, “The Jewish Question and the Social Question in late-Victorian London: The Fictions and Investigative Journalism of Margaret Harkness,” in Imagination and Commitment: The Representations of the Social Question, ed. Ilja van den Broek, Christianne Smit, and Dirk Jan Wolffram (Groeningen, 2010), 37–48.

  112. See Nigel Murphy, “Joe Lum v. Attorney General: The Politics of Exclusion,” in Manying Ip, ed., Unfolding History, Evolving Identity: The Chinese in New Zealand (Auckland, 2003).

  113. I’ve drawn these census statistics from John Stone, ed., Stone’s Wellington, Hawkes’s Bay and Taranaki Directory and New Zealand Annual, appendix “Birthplaces of People in N.Z. from 1901 Census” (Tawa, NZ, 1901), 59a.

  114. Lester, “From Birth to Death, 1, Bishopsgate.

  115. “Conciliation Board. The Match Factory Case,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), June 26, 1900, 6.

  116. Ibid.

  117. “The Match Industry,” Observer, November 7, 1896, 2.

  118. The MP reproduced the arguments detailed as early as 1895 by the anonymous author of “An Object Lesson in Protection,” Tuapeka Times, September 18, 1895, 4. The author calculated that the colony was paying £146 per worker to “protect” the factory while enriching the manufacturers.

  119. See speech by Thomas Noble Mackenzie, Scottish émigré marketing agent and opposition political leader, during debate over tariff bill on August 30, 1900, as quoted in “New Zealand Parliament,” Otago Witness, September 5, 1900, 30.

  120. See speech by David Buddo in New Zealand, Parliamentary Debates, First Session, 14th Parliament, Legislative Council and House of Representations, August 16 to September 13, 1900 (Wellington, 1900), 355. A Scottish émigré to New Zealand in 1874, Buddo was a member of the reformist wing of the Liberal Party, He remained an inveterate foe of the match industry. In 1909, he had the satisfaction of successfully shepherding through Parliament legislation banning all industrial uses of white phosphorous in New Zealand.

  121. Speech by R. Mackenzie, August 30, 1900, in New Zealand, Parliamentary Debates, First Session, 14th Parliament, Legislative Council and House of Representations, August 16 to September 13, 1900 (Wellington, 1900), 358.

  122. See Carolyn Malone, “Sensational Stories, Endangered Bodies: Women’s Work and the New Journalism in England in the 1890s,” on the Star’s 1898 campaign against Bryant and May. See also “Match Factory Horrors. Bryant and May Fined,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ) June 3, 1898, 5; and “Health,” letter to the editor, Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), September 28, 1898, 6.

  123. “Phosphorus-Poisoning in Match-Factories,” New Zealand Journal of the Department of Labour (Wellington, NZ, 1898), 676–77. Reeves was no admirer of Seddon. On their rivalry for office, see Keith Sinclair, William Pember Reeves: New Zealand Fabian (Oxford, 1965), chap. 11.

  124. See Register of Industrial Unions of Workers, The Wellington Match Factory Employees’ and Union of Workers, no. 187, Register of Unions and Employer Organisations, ABLC W4234 18111 Box 1, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

  125. For the terms of the act, see David McIntyre and W. J. Gardner, ed., Speeches and Documents on New Zealand History (Oxford, 1971), 209–12.

  126. In 1900, there were approximately 18,000 registered members of trade unions, with the largest concentration in the transport and building industries. At the outset, Reeves hoped that most cases would be settled through Conciliation, but by Nellie’s arrival in 1900 Arbitration courts invariably resolved industrial disputes. The next year, Conciliation Boards were effectively abolished as a costly and ineffective prelude to Arbitration. See National Industrial Conference Board, Conciliation and Arbitration in New Zealand: Research Report 23 (Boston, 1919).

  127. This was, ironically, an exact reversal of the policy that had first triggered worker protest in London in 1893. R. Bell had refused to pay by the gross because its matchbox fillers had packed and shipped off so many empty boxes.

  128. See “Conciliation Board. Match Factory Case,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), June 26, 1900, 5.

  129. See “The Match Factory Case,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), June 25, 1900, 6.

  130. See Hawkes’s Bay Herald, July 17, 1895, for a reprint of article about R. Bell and Company from the New Zealand Times.

  131. “MatchMaking Industry,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), July 25, 1906, 2.

  132. John Stone, ed., Stone’s Wellington, Hawkes’s Bay and Taranaki Directory and New Zealand Annual, appendix “Birthplaces of People in N.Z. from 1901 Census” (Tawa, NZ, 1901), 59a.

  133. Stone’s directory listed Lacey’s occupation as a laborer for 1900. My survey of tax records indicates that Lacey owned no property in Wellington, so he must have either managed the boardinghouse for the property owner or rented and managed the property for his own profit. See Rate Books, Wellington City Council, Te Aro Ward and Cook Ward, for 1900–1902, 00163: 0:142, Wellington City Archives, Wellington, New Zealand.

  134. Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), June 26, 1900, 5.

  135. Testimony of G. W. Lacey before Arbitration Court, as reported in Evening Post (Wellington, NZ),, July 24, 1900, 6.

  136. R. Bell successfully sued the commissioner to recover damages for lost goods and legal costs on a technical loophole in the law that required the commission to prove that the offending firm had “intended” to deceive. See “The Commissioner of Trade and Customs v. R. Bell and Co. (Limited),” in Martin Chapman, ed., The New Zealand Law Reports: Cases Determined by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal of New Zealand (Wellington, 1901), 19: 813–39.

  137. For Seddon’s views on the paramount importance of Imperial Unity, see Richard Seddon to Lord Ranfurly, May 10, 1900, Seddon Family Papers, Folder 10, 1619, Archives New Zealand.

  138. “New Zealand Match Factories,” Otago Witness, July 19, 1900, 32.

  139. R. Seddon, speech in reply to question by Mr. Wilford (Member, Wellington Suburbs), on “Match Making Industry,” vol. 111, New Zealand, Parliamentary Debates First Session, Fourteenth Parliament, Legislative Council and House of Representatives (Wellington, 1900), July 13, 1900, 546.

  140. For details of the transaction, see report in the Financial Half-Year vol. 2, April 1 to Sept 30, 1901 (London, 1901), 244–45. This was a semiannual yearbook about business and finance issued by the Times.

  141. New Zealand newspapers covered technological developments in the match industry. For an admiring description of the Diamond Match Company’s remarkable new machinery, see “A Marvelous Machine,” Grey River Argus, August 10, 1896, 4.

  142. Henry Macrosty and S. G. Hobson, “The Billion Dollar Trust. II.” Contemporary Review 80 (September, 1901): 333–54; “John Bull and Brother Jonathan. The Buying up of Bryant and May,” Supplement to the Review of Reviews, August 15, 1901, 212.

  143. Bryant and May’s “Buy British” campaign began so
on after the strike of 1888 and continued well into the 20th century. See its advertisement proclaiming that purchasing its products was a way to “Buy British” and support the unemployed by increasing their wages in Funny Folks (London), December 1, 1889, 415; see also Girl’s Own Paper, December 1, 1900. On the “skillful absorption” of Bryant and May by American Match to deceive British consumers, see “Match Makers’ Denial,” The Star (London), April 10, 1916.

  144. Rabindranath Tagore, My Reminiscences, chap. 22 (New York, 1917), 53.

  145. “The Growth of Newtown,” Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), April 2, 1898, 2.

  146. See “Bell, R. and Co.,” The Cyclopedia New Zealand [Wellington Provincial District] (Wellington, 1897), 748.

  147. I have reconstructed Swiney’s career as builder and landlord in Berhampore from the Wellington City Council Rate Books for 1900–1903, Series 00163.

  148. John Stone, ed., Stone’s Wellington, Hawkes’s Bay and Taranaki Directory and New Zealand Annual (Tawa, NZ, 1903), 41.

  149. William Pember Reeves, State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1902, 2011) 68.

  150. See Patricia Grimshaw, Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand (Auckland, 1972); on Women’s Christian Temperance Union in global perspective, see Ian Tyrrell, Woman’s World, Woman’s Empire: The Women’s Christian Temperance Union in International Perspective (London, 1991); see also Charlotte Macdonald, The Vote, the Pill, and the Demon Drink: A History of Feminist Writing in New Zealand (Wellington, 1993), chap.2.

  151. Lester, Salt of the Earth, 16. Muriel’s chronology is often confused. This would date Nellie’s time in New Zealand to 1904–5. Muriel also betrays her preference for the nonviolent constitutional arguments of the suffragists over the militancy of the suffragettes. Given the close alliance between the leading suffragettes and the pursuit of war during World War I, this is hardly surprising.

  152. Newtown Electoral Rolls, New Zealand, 1902.

  153. In From Birth to Death, Muriel indicates that the man for whom Nellie voted was called Fraser. A Fraser sat on Wellington Town Council for the Cook district of Wellington in 1900.

  154. For a contemporary assessment of the Swedish match industry, see Gustav Sunbarg, ed., Sweden, Its People and Its Industry (Stockholm, 1904), 822–27.

  155. See “Building Application, Match Factory,” April, 1910, 00053:157:8663, Wellington City Archives.

  156. See “Report of an Inquiry into the Price of Matches,” Cmd. 924, Reports from Commissioners, Inspectors and Others, Vol. XXIII (London, 1920), 5, prepared by the Sub-Committee appointed by the Standing Committee on the Investigation of Prices. The Swedish match industry has received considerable scholarly attention. See K. G. Hildebrand, The Swedish Match Company, 1917–1939 (Stockholm, 1985); H. Lindgren, Corporate Growth: The Swedish Match Industry in Its Global Setting (Stockholm, 1979); and L. Hassbring, The International Development of the Swedish Match Company, 1917–1924 (Stockholm, 1979).

  157. Lester, “From Birth to Death, 1,” Bishopsgate.

  158. A lifelong bachelor, Snell said nothing about his private life in his autobiography, Men, Movements and Myself (London, 1936).

  159. The East London branch of the Ethical Society, founded in 1889, numbered fewer than one hundred regular members at the turn of the century according to Charles Booth, who met with the society’s Hon. Sec. Miss Z. Vallance in May 1897. Vallance characterized members as “the better class of working-men and women, clerks, teachers,” whose willingness to endure minor persecutions for the views implied a “certain seriousness.” See “Interview with Miss Vallance, The Deanery Stratford, honorary secretary of East London Ethical Society,” May 20, 1897, B178, pp. 70–87, Booth Papers, BLPES.

  160. Fifty-nine people attended services at the Bow Road Ethical Society on the evening of the Daily News religious census of 1902–3. See Richard Mudie-Smith, ed., The Religious Life of London (London, 1904), 48.

  161. Horace Bridges, Stanton Coit, G. E. O’Dell, and Harry Snell, The Ethical Movement, Its Principles and Aims (London, 1911), 1–2.

  162. See G. Spiller, ed. Papers on Inter-Racial Problems, Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress (London, 1911), xix. On the diverse people involved in this remarkable gathering, see Susan Pennybacker, “The Universal Races Congress, London Political Culture, and Imperial Dissent,” Radical History Review (Spring 2005): 103–17.

  163. H. Snell, The Foreigner in England—an Examination of the Problems of Alien Immigration. Tracts for the Times Series, no. 4, n.s. (Keighley, 1904), 3–7.

  164. The 1911 census lists William Dellar as an inmate of the Forest Gate poorhouse run by Poplar Guardians. He was admitted to the Poplar and Stepney Poor Law Infirmary on March 1, 1906, Admission and Discharge Register, SA/M/1/32, Royal London Hospital Archives. There is some ambiguity in the surviving records about his discharge in August 1906.

  165. Lester, “From Birth to Death, 1,” Bishopsgate.

  166. See Register of Enquiries and Complaints relating to the employment of girls and women (and some males), Industrial Law Committee, YWCA Archives, MSS.243/142/2, Modern Record Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. The complaint was handled by Miss [Adelaide] Anderson.

  167. A. G. Hopkins, “The History of Globalization—and the Globalization of History?” in A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History (London, 2002), 28.

  168. W. T. Stead, “To All English-Speaking Folk,” Review of Reviews (January, 1890): 15–20.

  169. The metropolitan and colonial press offered extensive coverage of the Waiwera’s departure with New Zealand soldiers contributing to Britain’s efforts during the Boer War. See “The Boer War, The New Zealand Contingent,” Illustrated London News, December 9, 1899, 837.

  170. See “Imperialism as an Outlet for Population,” in J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London, 1902), 49.

  171. Lester, “From Birth to Death, 1,” Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  172. W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago, 1903), 1.

  173. Ranajit Guha, “Chandra’s Death,” in Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies V, Writings on South Asian History (Delhi, 1987), 138–39.

  Chapter Three. “Being a Christian in Edwardian Britain

  1. On Mafeking night and the impact of popular journalism in its choreography, see Paula Krebs, Gender, Race, and the Writing of Empire: Public Discourse and the Boer War (Cambridge, 1999). Krebs argues that journalists allied with state power to blur distinctions between working-class jingoism and middle-class patriotism. Muriel’s responses fully support this interpretation. See also Richard Price’s groundbreaking study, An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working–Class Attitudes and Reactions to the Boer War, 1899–1902 (London, 1972) which debunked the myth of unthinking working-class jingoism.

  2. Closer to home, Muriel’s older half-sister Jen and her husband (Sir) George Hardy had “tainted” themselves with pro-Boer sentiments. See Muriel Lester, It Occurred to Me (New York, 1937), 11. On the pro-Boers, see Stephen Koss, The Pro-Boers: Anatomy of an Antiwar Movement (Chicago, 1973). See also Emily Hobhouse, The Brunt of the War and Where It Fell (London, 1902), and her explosive exposé of British inhumanity to Boer women and children, “Concentration Camps,” Contemporary Review 80 (October 1901): 528–37. On Hobhouse’s tactics within the framework of women’s pacifist “internationalism,” see Heloise Brown, ‘The Truest Form of Patriotism:’ Pacifist Feminism in Britain, 1870–1902 (Manchester, 2003), chap. 10.

  3. In her diary, she quoted Tennyson’s narrator in the poem “Maud” (1855), who felt impatient with those who “prated” of the “blessings of peace.” Muriel Lester Diary, 1897–1906, 1/1/2 Lester Papers, Bishopsgate.

  4. Ibid. See also Lester, It Occurred to Me, 7, 11.

  5. Muriel had extensive knowledge of and contact with the Brotherhood Church during World War I because she was part of the radical “Crusader” group of pacifists who wrote about and defended the Brotherhood Chu
rch after it was raided and sacked in 1917. See chapter 4.

  6. For a hugely influential formulation of the transatlantic quest for personal “authenticity,” and a crisis of “self” within the dialectical framework of “antimodernism” and modernism, see T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago, 1981). My account offers a more optimistic trajectory about the prospect of such spiritual and ethical values in animating projects to change the world while acknowledging, as Lears does, their potential for therapeutic self-absorption.

  7. J. R. Seeley, Ecce Homo (London, 1865, 1916), v; see also Seeley’s essay that gave the title to an edited collection published by the Ethical Society, Ethics and Religion (London, 1900), 7, 11, 14.

  8. See Julie Melnyk, ed., Women’s Theology in the Nineteenth Century: Transfiguring the Faith of Their Fathers (1998). Let me underscore that God’s love figured crucially in most Christian theology. What is so distinctive about the tradition that I consider here is that God’s love was not bound up in sin and fallenness.

  9. In simplest terms, the Atonement refers to Jesus’s death and resurrection as the necessary means by which sinful humanity is reconciled to God. On the centrality of the Atonement to evangelical political culture and social argument, see Boyd Hilton’s superb Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1895 (Oxford, 1986).

  10. This conception of God is captured well by R. G. Burnett’s account of Methodist missionary work in East London from the 1880s to 1920s. He describes God in this way: “He is the Unseen Comrade, the Unfailing Friend.” See R. G. Burnett, Christ Down East (London, 1931), 106.

  11. Henry Lester, “Learning of Christ,” Presidential Address, Report of the Essex Baptist Union for the year 1903–1904, (1904), 16–17 in D/NB 2/26, Annual Reports of the Essex Baptist Union, Essex Record Office.